Chapter 3
“Why are you doing this?” I kept my voice low as the king personally escorted me—his guards in tow—back to the conservatory, the soulbinding he had on me shortened to keep me close.
I tried not to let my emotions leak into my voice and did so successfully, though the concern mingling with frustration coming from Renn made it especially difficult.
Concern over me, I thought, but I couldn’t place his frustration.
Couldn’t place him, wherever on the lower continent he might be.
As the king opened the door, the light of a single brazier highlighted his smile. “You have much to learn about politics, Miss Tallowax.”
I stepped into the room and turned around, looking at him. “Then explain it to me. Surely you could have asked King Grejor for her hand when you barged into Rove last autumn.”
He looked at me like I was a child, patient and condescending.
“It’s the throne you want, then?” I pressed.
I’d been on good behavior today, or so I thought, and the Sestan king had been equally pleasant.
Perhaps he’d be willing to throw me a bone.
I chose my words carefully. “When I worked in the castle . . . there seemed to be a lot of confusion about the war. So is that the reason? You want the land? The resources?” Though Sesta’s climate was colder, Sesta and Cansere shared many of the same resources; there wasn’t anything Cansere had that Sesta didn’t.
Sesta had more precious metals, if anything. “Its . . . crafters, perhaps?”
He chuckled. “What a noble picture you paint. Me coming to save the crafters.” He touched his chin, ruminating. “I don’t dislike it.”
“You said you wanted to get to know me better. Let me get to know you.” I tried to sound kind. Interested. Tried to sound more like Ursa—she’d always been the sweeter of the two of us. “I could help you better if I understood your goals.”
He seemed to consider that, the brazier’s embers glinting off his amused eyes.
The way the dim light hit him, with the shadows and his dark clothing, he almost looked like Renn.
It painted their noses similarly, their jaws.
But the moment the king shifted, the illusion cracked, and a little piece of me did, too.
“I appreciate the sentiment,” he said, back to his honeycomb sweetness. “But you needn’t worry about it. You’ll be taken care of—it’s the gods’ will.”
He patted me on my head before leading me to the Egroran and changing my binding to its trunk.
He started away, then paused. “If you’re very good, I’ll let you attend the wedding.
” He grinned, and in the light of the brazier, it made him look feral.
“It will be a small affair, but I do so want us to be friends.”
He departed, leaving me to the shadows.
Gods’ will, he’d said.
I mulled over this throughout the night, bearing exhaustion I did not think was entirely mine.
A great stained-glass window dedicated to Zia, and a passing comment on the gods’ will.
A nonreligious man did not make wayward comments about gods; only the devout did that, deities slipping into their tongue often without their realizing it.
King Nicosia had revealed something to me, then.
I just had to determine what exactly it meant, and how I might be able to use it.
Thoughts of religion took me back to Speth, to Sten’s basement.
The way he’d fallen to his knees at the sight of Renn whole and shimmering with unworldly light, the way he’d called him gods-touched, would remain sharp in my memory until my dying days.
Gooseflesh rose on my arms when I thought of him muttering the ancient prophecy like a prayer: When the kingdoms of men falter, the blood of the Allmaster shall rise up, garbed as an angel of fire, and balm its people as rain to the earth.
Could Renn possibly be the Allmaster from legend?
Whatever he was, he was different. Not just in light, but in movement, too.
I’d watched him catch that arrow with his bare hand.
Watched him cut a man in half with a single stroke of the sword.
Those abilities were superhuman . . . and yet the more I mulled over it, the more confusing it all became.
I had so little to go on. We’d been separated so quickly after his restoration.
Please, I tried to whisper through our heart connection, please stay safe, Renn.
I strengthened my heart and lumis wall in the morning before two servants and two guards came to retrieve me; one of the guards was a binder, and he moved my binding from the tree to himself, the leash short.
They led me through the palace at a measured pace, allowing me time to look around.
I drew the hallways on my palm with my index finger to help me memorize them.
I noted things Nicosia had shown me before, like the gallery, and mouthed the names for things that were new, inventing new terms when I did not recognize what I saw—white salon, forgotten bedroom, teal lounging area, very square window.
I noted the rugs, though many of them matched, and any art on walls or pedestals, or in alcoves.
I counted doorways and stairs, and how many steps I took between each, hoping Ursa could somehow take note, too, or hear what I dared not give voice to. Two minds were better than one.
We were descending a set of winding stairs with a dark wood banister into some sort of reception hall when, while taking note of the oil paintings on the wall, I saw a ghost. A man crossing the room with a familiar pattern of baldness on his head, the red cincture of Alm around his waist. The angle of his shoulders, the pacing of his stride . . .
I would have halted on the stairs had the guard behind me not pushed me forward. He was a specter, he had to be, because I knew for a fact that this man was dead.
He had nearly passed out of my line of sight. Heart racing, desperate to know, I called out to him.
“Whitestone.”
My gut sank as he turned around, seeking who had summoned him, showing me his face. My feet and hands went cold.
It was him, without a doubt. Wald Whitestone, the head physician at Rove Castle. The man who had been Renn’s doctor all his life, until his dismissal.
The man who had tried to have me killed.
His eyes found mine, and like a ghost, his entire countenance washed white.
I could stare at him, gawk at him, for only a moment; the guard behind me forced me around the stairs and away from the physician who’d earned a death sentence for hiring an assassin to stab me. Who’d nearly stripped Renn of his healer.
How, then, did he walk these halls? Sestan halls?
My mind reeled, so much so that I could no longer take in my surroundings, note rooms, nor count steps.
I could still feel the assassin’s blade beneath my ribs.
Renn had sent out men to find the killer and broadcast that the assassin had been captured, with the ruse that a confession was in the making.
All of it was strategy to capture the man who’d hired my death.
Sure enough, Wald Whitestone had taken the bait and fled, only to be arrested.
He’d confessed and been executed. Renn told me he’d been executed.
Renn had no reason to lie to me, so something else was afoot here. Something I did not yet understand.
My retinue brought me to a wide room lit by a single grand chandelier hanging from a black-painted ceiling, illuminating seven marble statues depicting humanesque forms, each with a cincture around its waist: white, yellow, blue, green, red, violet, and gray.
The gods, in order—Hem, Salm, Rolys, Evat, Alm, Zia, and another that was not part of the pantheon.
Zia and this last one marked in gray were larger than the rest, something many might call blasphemy, for Hem was the god above all, not his forgotten and singular female descendant.
As I stared at the last statue, I noted a triangle on the chin and suddenly recognized the likeness.
Adoel Nicosia. The Sestan king had included himself in his all-gods shrine, and he stood overlarge beside Zia. No—he had a couple of inches on the goddess.
My muscles felt tight. I had never been strongly religious, but even I gawked at such a display. Did he think himself so great as to be numbered among almighties?
I forced my eyes away, taking in dark wood paneling and blue carpet, elaborate wainscoting.
A heavy scent of incense curled through the air.
The shrine had been emptied of nearly all its furniture, minus a few chairs along the edges and narrow shelves near the door full of scriptures and other parchments.
Only a few people occupied it, mostly guards or soldiers, ranks stitched to their collars in silver.
The sight of Eden ahead, standing between Rolys and Evat, pushed my confusion into the corner of my mind; she wore an elegant burgundy gown so thickly stitched with silver it appeared more metallic than red.
Against Canseren fashion, her hair had been curled and pinned.
Her puffy eyes, red rimmed, spoke of hours of crying.
Only minutes after I arrived, kept to the back of the chamber, did a man enter wearing a thick cincture of every color. A priest. He initiated the ceremony.
The wedding. The presence of Whitestone had made me forget entirely. I searched the room once more, checked the door, but the physician did not attend.